By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

Dreer has ventured to tackle an interesting but most difficult subject, usingthe methodological frame set up by the Columbia School founded by the lateWilliam Diver.

The first part of the study (pp. 3-51) examines different traditionalsentence-oriented approaches to the problem of French mood, such as thesyntactic approach (pp. 4-9) which explains the subjunctive in the subordinateclause by syntactical or lexical triggers in the main clause: il faudra ( =trigger) que tu viennes (subjunctive).

In the second part (pp. 55-81) the sentence-oriented approaches are rejected infavor of a sign-oriented approach as the Columbia School has developed it.According to Dreer the subjunctive is defined as a sign with the invariantsignified 'alternative to occurrence' i.e. ''the contextual implication of anexpectation to the contrary of whatever is expressed by the Subjunctive, i. e. adeparture from the encoder's expectations'' (p.76) opposed to the sign indicativemeaning 'occurrence' i.e. ''a situation, experienced in the present or the past,or expected to take place in the future ...'' (p.76).

The fourth part (pp. 165-196) presents a series of macroanalyses on the use ofthe subjunctive and the indicative. Dreer applies two different approaches, thefirst called ''from sign to text'', the second ''from text to sign''. Thus, inSimenon's novel Le revolver de Maigret, the subjunctive meaning 'alternative tooccurrence' is predominant in the introduction, the part of the text whereinquiries are made and questions asked, whereas the indicative meaning'occurrence' plays the important part in the outset of the story where answersare given (pp.174-179). The play Antigone by Jean Anouilh is studied accordingto the ''from text to sign'' approach. The character who opposes the dominantpower, Antigone, will have much recourse to the subjunctive, but the chorus, whoknows, who represents destiny, prefers the indicative. (pp.182-196).

The fifth section gives a diachronic outline of the use of the subjunctive inFrench (pp. 197-254). The author first wants to explain how the use of thesubjunctive in general, that of the subjunctive imperfect and the pluperfect inparticular, have decreased over time. He thinks that in Old French thesubjunctive had the much broader meaning of 'occurrence questioned' relating toan event happening differently or not happening; during the transition from OldFrench to Modern French this meaning was narrowed to 'alternative tooccurrence', a narrowing which would account for the decline of the subjunctive(pp. 207-215). To explain the decreasing use of the imperfect subjunctive, Dreerpostulates that the subjunctive mode participates in the system of relevance(''An occurrence is relevant to the encoder, if the latter is involved directlyin its realization or manifests his/her interest in its possible outcome. ''Dreer 2007: 223) and that subjunctive present means 'alternative tooccurrence'/'more relevant' whereas subjunctive imperfect stands for'alternative to occurrence'/'less relevant (pp. 207-221). He thinks that themeanings 'alternative to occurrence' and 'less relevant' of the subjunctiveimperfect could explain the near disappearance of these forms in spoken andwritten French. (for details, cf. p. 253).

In the larger part of the section he compares by micro- and macroanlyses the useof the different forms of the subjunctive in Modern and Old French. (pp.223-229, 231-237, 239-247, 249-254).

Final remarks summarizing the results of the study and giving a few outlooks fornew research conclude the study (pp. 255-258).

EVALUATIONThis study, based on a PhD-thesis entitled ''The Significance of an Alternativein Linguistic Analysis: The Subjunctive versus the Indicative in French. ASign-Oriented Approach'' presented in 2006 at the Ben-Gurion University of theNegev, Israel, gives a stimulating description, coherent from the point of viewof Columbia School theory, of the use of the subjunctive in Modern and OldFrench. Unfortunately, the author does not always support his explanations bylinguistic data drawn from a scientifically built up language database and neverventures to depart from Columbia School theory, even when it becomes clear thatthe approach is inoperative.

Dreer has written a strongly structured and detailed study on the use of thesubjunctive, which in the frame of the Columbia School theory has an undeniablelogic. In sentences where the speaker actually has the choice between indicativeand subjunctive, for example after verba sentiendi and dicendi accompanied by anegation (pp. 148-153; Cf. Grevisse and Goosse 2008: § 1126b, 1458-1459),Dreer's approach generally gives an elegant explanation of the mood chosen.

The presentation is impeccable and the only reproach to be leveled are theendless repetitions, summaries and multiple references to Columbia School theorythat betray the academic origin of the book. The author should have reworked histhesis and removed the academic jumble rendering his study more readable for thegeneral public.

But some problems arise when the abstract framework set by Columbia Schooltheory is discarded and the reader simply focuses on the linguistic facts theauthor tries to explain and the linguistic data used. First the assumptions madeby the author, i. e. the indicative is a sign with the signified 'occurrence'opposed to the subjunctive sign meaning 'alternative to occurrence', should havebeen validated by linguistic data, i. e. a corpus of sentences collected in adatabase and subjected to a statistical treatment.

Dreer is in full agreement with this procedure and he has set up a corpuslargely based on twentieth-century French literary texts – pp. 80, 266-268 –which he subjects to a statistical treatment: ''The Columbia School also reliesextensively 'on quantitative methods of validation' showing 'a statisticalskewing in favor of one or the other meaning' '' (p. 73; cf. also p. 164).

Unfortunately the author does not always put this excellent protocol intopractice. Dreer explains nowhere how he has assembled the corpus, if it has beencomputerized and by what methods and what software he has used to explore it. Ageneral presentation of all the data provided by the corpus, possibly on CD-ROM,would also have been most welcome.

One may also wonder why the author did not simply use the important corpusFrantext freely available in many university libraries (On Frantext, cf.http://www.atilf.fr/frantext.htm). The main reproach to be directed at the studyhowever is that the author has not completed his corpus mostly based on literarytexts by a second corpus closer to spoken language, which would have given amore nuanced and deeper understanding of the patterns and trends of theopposition indicative/subjunctive in Modern French.

After verbs and expressions of volition, where in fact no choice exists and thesubjunctive is automatically triggered by the introducing verb or expression,the opposition indicative/subjunctive has been neutralized and the subjunctivehas become primarily a conjunctivus strengthening the coherence of the sentence.I wonder if we are not dealing here with the phenomenon of grammaticalization.

The use of the indicative and the subjunctive in subordinate clauses is acomplex phenomenon that cannot be apprehended by a single point of view. Theapproach of Columbia School applied here by Igor Dreer, which in fact elegantlyenlightens some aspects of this phenomenon, is inoperative on others. In myopinion a broader approach could have yielded more satisfying results.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:Joseph Reisdoerfer studied Classics and French in Germany (Heidelberg) andFrance (Angers Reims, Nancy, Paris) and holds PhDs in French literature (Nancy2), linguistics (Nancy 2) and Latin (Paris X Nanterre). He teaches Frenchlinguistics at the Université du Luxembourg and Classics and French at theAthénée de Luxembourg.